Bill Nemitz’s Jan. 15 Maine Sunday Telegram column regarding Esther Smith’s writings was very interesting (“Nearly a century later, memories rekindle old bond”).

Mrs. Smith’s memories of time in the one-room schoolhouse is a story many middle-age Maine residents can share.

Additional Photos

This one-room schoolhouse is no longer standing, but once occupied a site next to Flat Road Cemetery in Bethel. A letter writer points out that the experience of attending a one-room school is shared by many Mainers. bethelhistorical.org

My three siblings attended a one-room schoolhouse in Prospect in the 1960s. They share their stories of trips to the outhouse, of a wood stove as heat, of a local farmer bringing in metal canisters of water for washing hands.

They share what the schoolday looked like — one teacher for 30 students, with children graduating the next year by moving back one row in the line of connected inkwell desks.

In 1964, the Prospect schools closed. My sister remembers well the first time being bused to the multi-room, multi-storied, plumbed-with-running-water Bucksport schools. The Prospect students were given seating assignments together on one side of the classroom, an act innocently meant to ease the transition, but one that my sister said caused a sense of being ostracized.

The Prospect Historical Society, founded in the 1980s by my father, has been working hard to bring back its one-room schoolhouse. Its officers are former students, including a husband and wife whose photos appear next to each other in the school collage of 1963.

The building has served as a town hall and community center, and is hosting fundraisers to present itself as the schoolhouse it once was. Original desks and books, scooped up by residents during 1964, are trickling back.

A similar, successful effort sponsored by the Historical Society of Wells and Ogunquit can be found in its one-room schoolhouse on Route 9 in Wells, which is opened during the summer months for touring. It is well worth the visit for those wishing to get a sense of Mrs. Smith’s days as a schoolgirl in a one-room schoolhouse in Maine.

Lucy Webb Hardy

Wells

Tax laws take resources away from middle class

The prosperity of a nation is directly tied to the prosperity of its middle class. As on a bell curve, the middle class should be the largest of the three classes, upper, middle and lower. I am not talking about an aristocracy, a merchant class and a class of serfs. This is strictly economics.

The wealth of a nation is finite. There are only so many dollars, so much credit, so many services, so many products. It doesn’t matter if we are speaking only of the amount of currency in circulation, or the amount of currency plus the amount of credit, or any combination of the four components. It is a finite number.

View the wealth of a nation as a large bucket of marbles; whenever a marble is removed from the bucket, there are that many fewer marbles for distribution among the remaining population.

So by our tax laws, which undoubtedly favor the wealthiest 1 percent in this country, we are taking that much away from things that could be done to grow the middle class, such as research and development, education and repairing our decaying infrastructure.

It would be a calamity if our tax structure were reordered to simply redistribute wealth as entitlements. This would suffocate our economy and hasten the decline of the middle class.

Roy Quinn

Saco

Lawmakers should enact option for clean elections

I appreciate the Maine Sunday Telegram’s endorsement of a plan to strengthen the citizen-initiated Clean Elections Act in the wake of a damaging Supreme Court decision (Our View, “Lawmakers should fix, not gut, Clean Elections,” Jan. 15).

The option favored by this paper, known as the “requalifying” option, was developed by the state’s Ethics Commission during its review of the court’s ruling last summer.

It is the result of an open public process that included public hearings and much back-and-forth discussion among stakeholders. It has been endorsed by clean election supporters from across the political spectrum, including the nonpartisan Maine Citizens for Clean Elections.

Bad Supreme Court decisions are nothing new to anyone working to get the big money out of politics. But just because a majority on that court espouse some radical notions about campaign finance and the First Amendment doesn’t mean that we should give up.

In Maine we have some radical notions of our own. We value the opportunity for all people to participate in our democracy. We think that qualified people should be able to run competitive campaigns.

We value diverse voices in elections because we appreciate the marketplace of ideas they create. We want our candidates to be heard above the din created by PACs and other independent spenders. We want those we elect to serve without financial ties to special interests.

We can’t change the court, but we can respond with innovative ideas and bold action to keep our successful Clean Elections system viable. The Legislature should pass the requalifying option without delay.

Alison Smith

president, Maine Citizens for Clean Elections

Portland

County budget an example of trouble with government

Knox County budget? Who is in charge?

Who says that public sector employees are entitled to career jobs, market-based pay raises, competitive benefits packages and a generous retirement program?

Maybe in good financial times, the people would be willing to give whatever is necessary to attract and keep good employees in essential positions, but now is not that time.

It is likely that hundreds of out-of-work or underemployed citizens would be willing to accept each and every county position at its current or even reduced pay rates.

The people who fund county positions are struggling as they try to keep their jobs, pay their bills or find work. We are suffering crushing increases in local, state and federal taxes. We are trying to cope with runaway food and energy costs while our own paychecks are stagnant or diminishing. We have watched our retirement savings disappear and our home equities cut in half.

All around the world, the excesses of bloated governments are taking their toll on the economy and citizenry. The costs and interference of our governments have destroyed our ability to support it and ourselves. Our governments are collapsing under their own weight.

Our only choice is to reduce the burden of government, not increase it. Leadership at all levels of government needs to realize this and make changes in the right direction before the people are forced to do it for them.

John Field

Union

Helping people would be better way to honor King

I was watching the evening news last Monday and I thought it interesting that on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the speaker at the Portland breakfast talked about lack of benefits for those in “need.”

The news report that followed the coverage of the dinner was about a monument to King. Maybe a plaque would be better and the monies that the monument would cost could be used to help people with medical and housing expenses. Let’s be better stewards of our money.

Sharon Judkins

Freeport

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